11/22/2012

[As I have done before, I am reprinting the post below from 2006, about a mental exercise I sometimes employ to help me appreciate the good things in my life. Many people have written me to say that they have given their loved ones an extra hug after reading the post.

Even if you’re going through a rough time, there are no doubt positive aspects of your life that you won’t be able to count on forever. Hopefully this post will help you not to take those things for granted. Happy Thanksgiving.]

I’ve discovered a way to bring a new perspective to your life.

To explain it, I have to tell a little story.

Driving home Friday night, I was remembering a time years ago, when my daughter Lauren (now six years old) was in her first year. An old friend of mine was coming to town, and we went with my wife to see a Glen Phillips solo acoustic concert down near San Diego.

We were very excited to see the show. But for some reason, we couldn’t get a babysitter. So we decided to take Lauren. Since it was just an acoustic show, we hoped that she’d sleep peacefully on my lap. If, during the show, she got upset, I would take her out to the car. Thereafter, my wife and I would take turns watching her in the car.

Lauren was asleep when the concert began — but she awoke, crying, five seconds into the first song. It was louder than we had thought it would be. I hurriedly took her to the car, which was parked on the street about half a block away.

Once I had her out there, I never brought her back inside the club. Although part of me wanted to be back inside watching the concert, I was also having fun being with my daughter — at times talking to her when she was awake, and at times watching her sleep. Plus, I wanted to let my wife see the whole concert. I figured there was no reason to interrupt her enjoyment if I was having a perfectly good time.

It wasn’t so much that I preferred to be with my daughter than to watch a concert. I just didn’t mind staying out with her in the car.

Thinking about this the other night, I asked myself: Patrick, if you could go back to that night, right now, and either stay out in the car with Lauren, or be inside and watch the concert — which would you do?

And of course the answer was obvious.

The night it happened, I didn’t mind being in the car with my daughter. But if I could go back now, there’s no question that I would want to be there.

Not only would I stay in the car with her — I would make the most of the experience, realizing that I had a precious chance to see her at that age again. I would try to commit every moment to memory.

And then I realized: some day, years in the future, I might be asking the same question about my life today — this very minute. If you could have this moment back to live over again, what would you do?

The rest of that evening, I pictured myself as having been sent into my body from the future, to relive the moments I was experiencing. And I saw everything differently. I sat on the couch and watched television with my arm around my wife — all the while imagining myself as an old man, transported back in time to relive that moment. And all of a sudden, what otherwise might have seemed like a mundane moment seemed like a privilege. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world, just sitting there with my wife.

I’ve tried the trick all weekend, and it really changes your outlook. Just sitting around with a sleepy child in your arms is great any way you look at it. But if you picture yourself as someone whose child has grown up — if you imagine yourself as an older man, who would give the world to be back in that chair with that child in his arms — it makes you realize how important the moment is. And you appreciate it more.

Like any epiphany, I know that this will pass, to be remembered only from time to time. I hope I remember it often, when routine is wearing on me.

But there are times I actively need to forget it, because this outlook promotes a sort of hedonism. For example, right now, I need to clean the house — but that’s not really what I would choose to do if I were sent here from the future.

Oh, well. I’m going to clean up anyway. I think the guy from the future would understand — sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do. I can hear my future self in my head right now. He says to make a nice cup of coffee and put on some music while I do it, and take some breaks to play with the kids. Enjoy the chores as well as the easy and fun moments, I hear him saying. Some day, you’ll miss even the chores. Some day, you’ll miss almost everything about your life the way it is right now.

I don’t know…italics can be used to make something distinct from text and to stand out…. Perhaps a stretch, but it seems appropriate that you, of all commenters, should be in italics. Happy Thanksgiving, Patterico. Thanks for all you do here.

When my oldest son was about three, I was planning to take him with us on a trip to the Sierras. Before we went, however, I wanted to see how he would do sleeping outside in a tent and the whole wilderness thing. So I took him with me up to the Crystal Lake campground in the San Gabriel Mountains. It was just the two of us and I cooked dinner on a Coleman stove, then we slept in a tent. The next morning, we ate breakfast, then drove home. He did well, so a couple of weeks later we made our Sierras trip.

He has gone with me all over the world, including sailing to Hawaii when he was 16 but, for some reason, he remembers that overnight camping trip as best of all. I should have done more of those dad and son things with him when he was little. I was busy and we did lots of things as a family but the time we spent as just two of us stuck with him the best. I should have done more of that. He is 47 now and, if I mention that weekend tonight at Thanksgiving dinner, I’m sure he will remember it well.

Patrick, the youngest of my two daughters is 41 now. As a young lawyer working hard in a big law firm in San Diego, I spent many nights in the office working until 9 or 10. My wife would go over to her mother’s place for dinner and conversation—and I’d pick them up on my way home. I can still recall holding one or the other of my infant daughters in my arms as we drove home to our place. These days the PC police would be on us for not having the child in a rearward facing car seat. But the pleasant memory of those more innocent times remains.

Wonderful tale that deserves telling at least every year. Time and tides don’t wait.

How about a box around your comment’s color background, rather than a different color or typestyle? That will let you use the whole array of text features. It’s something like “border:2px dashed blue;”.

This is my first Thanksgiving since my mother died. My father and brother are spending a few days with me, my wife, and two kids. I have tons of grading to do, but I am cherishing these times with my family, and storing them up in my memory banks.

If you could have this moment back to live over again, what would you do?

I think that’s a big reason one of my all-time favorite movies is “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray.

I recall someone saying that people’s sense of time is influenced by how much of a ratio of 10 years (ie, a decade) represents their entire lifetime. IOW, to a 5-year-old, 10 years is twice his lifetime, to a 10-year-old, it’s his entire lifetime, to a 20-year-old, it’s one-half his lifetime, to a 30-year-old, it’s one-third of his lifetime. And so on and so forth.